Perceived environmental uncertainty, organizational adaptation, and employee performance: A longitudinal study in professional accounting firms

Abstract

The importance of organizational adaptation to the environment has been long recognized. A major feature of this adaptation process involves coping with environmental uncertainty. This paper reports the results of an exploratory longitudinal study which investigated the effectiveness of organizational coping in several large professional accounting firms. A significant positive relationship was observed between the reported level of organizational coping and employee performance. The implications of this finding for professional accounting firms, and organizations in the general, are discussed.